Peter Kreeft - Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Heaven-- But Never Dreamed of Asking

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Heaven...
But Never Dreamed of Asking

PETER KREEFT

First Complete Edition

IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO

Portions previously published by
Harper & Row Publishers
San Francisco
and Fitzhenry & Whiteside, Ltd.
Toronto

Quotations from the Bible, unless otherwise indicated in the notes,
are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible,
copyrighted 1946, 1952, 1971, and 1973.

Cover by Riz Boncan Marsella

1990 Ignatius Press, San Francisco
All rights reserved
ISBN 178-0-9870-297-2
Library of Congress catalogue number 89-82372
Printed in the United States of America

for John

Gods first gift, good and true

a strong and soaring eagle ,

an ocean silent and deep

for Jenny

white wave ,

lovely lioness ,

leaping, conquering all obstacles

for Katherine

the quiet beauty of a great flowering tree ,

an infinitely precious diamond

reflecting light on all things with her love

for Elizabeth

a queen, a rose, a treasure saved and cherished ,

a swift river watering the worlds dryness with her

Of these four masterpieces

written by God with human hands

I am unutterably proud.

NOTE

Throughout this book I have insisted on capitalizing Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, as well as pronouns referring to the deity, contrary to current convention. My justification for the first is that these places are quite as real and substantial as Kokomo or Timbuktu; and the second is justified practically, for claritys sake, as well as theologically, out of respect and adoration (which are also contrary to current convention!).

CONTENTS

Introduction

Will my dead cat be alive in Heaven?

Can I get to Heaven without being religious?

Why wont Heaven get boring?

What kind of body will I have in Heaven?

Is there sex in Heaven?

Why cant you get there in a rocket ship?

Can you time travel in Heaven?

Is Heaven here on earth?

Can anyone answer such questions? Is this book possible?

Everyone asks such questions, consciously or unconsciously. For next to the idea of God, the idea of Heaven is the greatest idea that has ever entered into the heart of man, woman, or child.

But wait. Right here at the beginning we run into a problem. My uncle put it this way:

I hear youre writing a book. Whats it about?

Heaven.

Heaven, eh? Do you have some thoughts about it?

Of course I have some thoughts about it. How could I write a book about it if I didnt? Isnt that a silly question?

No, I dont think so. Follow my thought for a minutethese thoughts of yours: theyve entered into your mind and heart, right?

Of course. What are you driving at?

Just this: according to the Bible, your book must be wrong.

What? How can you say that? You havent even read it yet. In fact, I havent even written it yet!

Well, the Bible describes Heaven this way: Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. And your thoughts have entered into the heart of man. Therefore your thoughts cant be the truth about Heaven.

He had me there. I almost threw the manuscript away.

But then I thought of the answer, weeks later. I thought of the other great idea, the idea of God. It too is the idea of something (or rather Someone) that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. Yet that fact has not stopped us from writing millions of books and billions of words about God.

Many of those words are silly or stupid. Most of them are secondhand platitudes. But some are helpful and enlightening. And a few are even awesomely wise and wonderful. Perhaps the same is true of our words about Heaven. And perhaps all four kinds of words are found in this book.

Whats Different about This Book

Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh. Why is this one necessary?

Because there are only three kinds of books about Heaven, and this one is of a fourth kind.

First and best, there are the classics, the great old books written by the saints and sages. Unfortunately, these are rarely read today, and many are out of print. Also, they require the understanding of some premodern philosophical and theological language and techniques of reading that many modern readers have lost (unless they have had teachers like Mortimer Adler or read books like How to Read a Book).

The other two kinds of books available are current books, which are pretty sharply divided into the popular versus the scholarly, the inspirational versus the professional. This division can be unhealthy for both kinds, for it tends to reduce inspirational books to sentiment and clich with little intellectual bite, and scholarly books to detached dullness and technicality with little existential bite. The first do not speak to our minds and the second do not speak to our hearts or our lives: a case of heat without light or light without heat. That is why I constantly turn back to the blazing sunlight of a Saint Augustine or a Saint Bernard of Clairvaux.

Very few orthodox Christians in this century have combined (1) the inspirational and the scholarly, (2) ancient wisdom and modern language, and (3) imagination and Christian orthodoxy. Among these few, C. S. Lewis stands out as unmistakably the prime example. He has probably influenced more unbelievers to believe and deepened and toughened the faith and understanding of more believers than any other writer of the twentieth century.

But Lewis never wrote a theological study of Heaven, although he did write (1) a great little poetic fantasy about it, The Great Divorce , a kind of twentieth-century miniature of The Divine Comedy ; (2) an unutterably moving and unforgettable sermon about it, The Weight of Glory; and (3) two highly imaginative and intelligent chapters on it in his two most ambitious theological books, The Problem of Pain and Miracles . It uses his eyes and mine in binocular vision.

Rather, the vision is multi-ocular. Many other and greater explorers have discovered this undiscovered country MacDonald stands on Augustines, Augustine stands on Saint Pauls, Saint Paul stands on Christs. That far up, you see far. We need a Great Chain of Thinking to see the Great Chain of Being. Here is one small link.

Part I

Chapter One

What Difference Does Heaven Make?

If a thing makes no difference, it is a waste of time to think about it. We should begin, then, with the question, What difference does Heaven make to earth, to now, to our lives?

Only the difference between hope and despair in the end, between two totally different visions of life; between chance or the dance. At death we find out which vision is true: does it all go down the drain in the end, or are all the loose threads finally tied together into a gloriously perfect tapestry? Do the tangled paths through the forest of life lead to the golden castle or over the cliff and into the abyss? Is death a door or a hole?

To medieval Christendom, it was the world beyond the world that made all the difference in the world to this world. The Heaven beyond the sun made the earth under the sun something more than vanity of vanities. Medieval man was still his Fathers child, however prodigal, and his world was meaningful because it was my Fathers world and he believed his Fathers promise to take him home after death.